User blog:PersephoneQuarius/Why I Can't Write A Blog
And why that's OK! So hey, I'm Virgo and I'm a long-term procrastinator. I have wanted to write a blog for a really long time, but in honesty I can't even read blogs more than one or two posts, so actually maintaining my own is pretty unlikely. There's a thousands of different topics I would like to post about, but the daunting feeling of actually having to write a polished, complete and satisfying post on any one topic leaves me paralyzed. I'm writing this post without editing it, because that's the only way I'm ever going to start. Perfectionism is the enemy and so I'm writing this knowing full well that it's not going to be perfect. And guess what, Virgo? 'NOTHING IS!' That's right! Nothing is perfect. So then why do perfectionists exist? How do we even survive in this world if we are always trying to strive for something that doesn't even exist? The answer is that sometimes things come pretty close and sometimes they fall really far. Perfection is kind of a spectrum and subjective too, so as long as something is as good as you imagined it should be then its perfect to you. Getting 100% on a Maths test is a "perfect" score. Sure, you could have probably thrown in an extra line of working here and there and it would have been "more perfect", but it doesn't matter because you knew what was required for the full score. Pathological Perfectionism The problem with being a Pathological Perfectionist™ is that there are no criteria sheets for daily life. In our school years, we are told what is expected of us, we are guided into what defines "perfect" and are able to focus our attention on these criteria and know when we feel we have done enough to meet them. When we leave the school environment we find precious few of these same guidelines. The only guides we have are what other people are doing and the positive and negative reinforcement that we get from them on our behaviour. Autistic Perfectionism vs Allistic Perfectionism How do we interpret the guidelines set by society at large? There is not one clear set of criteria offered by observing human behaviour. The problem with taking a perfectionist's mindset and applying it to life outside of schoolwork is that there are no more objective lines. People have different values and beliefs and knowledge and will encourage and discourage different behaviour based on their own values and sometimes just on the basis of how they are feeling at the time. This doesn't affect non-autistic people (allistic people) half so much as it does autistic people like myself. The key difference is that allistic people have an innate tendency to ignore objective details of a situation and "read between the lines". Instead of interpretting the world in literal terms, allistic people tend to see the world through the lens of what they already believe and then take in new information through this lens. When new information doesn't fit into their lens, they tend to dismiss it. Hence, the world of conflicting views becomes much simpler and they can find a sort of stability in their own values and beliefs. For autistic people, this conflict tends to be felt more strongly. We deal with absolutes and find it difficult to understand how someone else can have a worldview other than our own, due to our worldview being often highly logical and structured. In this sense, people with different worldviews are harder to simply dismiss, because they often feel plain incorrect. This is part of what makes "Aspies" (autistic people with little to no intellectual disability) so infamously irritating to argue with. Rather than a discussion of equal but differing viewpoints, it is often simply a black and white description of whose logic is flawed. Allistic people do not like this. Allistic people do not want to have their lens shattered or be told that their logic is flawed, even when there is clear evidence proving it to be so. Autistic people tend to think that providing this information to their confused allistic friends will be considered a service. After all, if our logic were ever faulty, we would be very troubled and want to know as soon as possible so that it can be corrected. However, to allistic people I think the main point of their lens/viewpoint is not to show them truth - but rather to make them feel comfortable in their own truth. When their logic is dissected, it makes them feel attacked and oftent they perceive us autistic people as arrogant for daring to think that "logic" gives us the right to judge anyone else's views. Subjectivity ...and to be fair, they often have a point. Sometimes logic isn't as black and white as we autistic people like to imagine it is. In truth, all logic (even mathematical logic) relies on assumptions and axioms. In mathematics these can start very simple such as the meanings of "0", "1", "+" and "-" to allow integers to be developed. In fields like mathematics, physics, engineering and chemistry, these axioms are usually non-controversial and so people tend to be able to argue without worrying about whether they are looking at a problem through the same lens. However, in the "real world" there is no universal set of axioms to define what is "right" or "wrong", what is "good" and what is "bad". Particularly in social situations, where people's feelings tend to matter as much (if not more) than the factual content of a conversation, these hidden axioms tend to baffle people who are used to using a fixed set of agreed assumptions. Autistic people tend to suffer most in social situations because of this black and white perfectionistic thinking. While we tend to excel in fields like mathematics, science and technology. Summary So, I've pretty much written a blog post now. Was it cohesive? No. Did it have a main thread with a beginning, middle and an end? No. But neither do my thoughts. They are always progressing and continuing and if I kept writing they would go on far longer than anyone would be willing to read them, so I have stopped. And that's what irks a perfectionist more than anything. What's the point of starting something if it's going to end up unfinished anyway? Well, isn't that what life is all about? Category:Blog posts Category:Virgo Category:Blog Posts